CHARLOTTETOWN, P.E.I. - The firing of a radio announcer has prompted an online petition signed by more than 2,500 listeners.
Joee Adams was fired from the Charlottetown-based classic rock radio station Q93 on Jan. 18 after four years as the morning radio host.
After he announced his departure in a Facebook post, a petition began circulating online to have Adams back on the Maritime Broadcasting System-owned station.
“I didn’t ask people to start a petition, but it’s a nice thing to have,” said Adams. “The amount of people that have reached out to me, I have no words, and that’s coming from a guy who talks for a living.”
Q93 station manager Rick MacLeod said he could not comment on Adams’ termination because it was confidential.
Adams said he was fired because some of the things he has said on air could be considered “inappropriate”.
He said he had been warned by MBS multiple times throughout his tenure, including two months ago.
“It’s justifiable on their end,” said Adams. “At the end of the day, they did what they felt was best for them, for their frequency and for their radio station, and I’ll admit there was numerous times I was kind of addressed by superiors about the content of my show.”
Adams said it was a segment on Monday, Jan. 14 that may have been the last straw.
The segment was a recurring one called “The Q of the Day”, in which Adams would ask a question and listeners would respond on the station’s Facebook page.
That morning, the question was about things people shouldn’t do in public.
Adams said he named some of the examples from listeners such as “shaving your private parts at a PTA meeting” and “watching porn in a library.”
“Some people, I would imagine, found that content maybe inappropriate,” said Adams. “It was meant to be a fun thing that was meant to be taken as satire.”
Adams said he has never meant to be offensive.
“I never set out to purposely offend anybody, I was just trying to entertain,” said Adams. “The reason that I chose to do and say the things that I did was because I always thought it was in the best interest of the station and to the benefit of the listener.”
Listeners of Adams’ took to social media and commented on the petition to express their feelings about his departure from the radio station.
“Joee kept me entertained on my drive to work and made me laugh and made local radio great again,” wrote Derrick Farrar in the petition’s comment section.
Samantha Squires said she signed the petition because people should stop being offended so easily.
“I’m signing because this ‘I’m offended’ trend needs to die,” she wrote. “He talks in the same manner that most people talk to their friends.”
By the morning of Jan. 21, the online petition had gained over 2,600 signatures.
